Coworking and Sustainable Business Model Innovation in Young Firms

Abstract

In larger cities, we see a rising trend of more people working outside their traditional offices, and engaging in a practice called co-working by sharing office space. The public policy makers of innovation-driven economies, on the other hand, have been availing co-working spaces and related support to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Despite the growing significance of this area, there has been limited research on the link between coworking and innovation among young firms. This research examines the relationship between coworking space and innovation, particularly business model innovation (BMI) for sustainable performance. Based on an empirical study of 258 young tenant firms operating in 13 coworking spaces in Singapore, we establish that the space creativity of coworking spaces is positively related to the BMI outcome of tenant firms. Tenant firms’ opportunity recognition and exploitation (ORE) process positively mediates the relationship between the space creativity of coworking spaces and the BMI outcome of tenant firms. While the social climate of the coworking space is found to have no direct effect on the BMI outcome of tenant firms, tenant firms’ ORE process positively mediates the relationship between the social climate of coworking spaces and the sustainable BMI outcome of tenant firms.